one engrossing thought, and he discovered that until then he had not
lived. As for her, her love was made up of vanity and spite. The thing
that she relished above all else was Claire's degradation in her eyes.
Ah! if she could only have said to her, "Your husband loves me--he is
false to you with me," her pleasure would have been even greater. As for
Risler, in her view he richly deserved what had happened to him. In her
old apprentice's jargon, in which she still thought, even if she did not
speak it, the poor man was only "an old fool," whom she had taken as a
stepping-stone to fortune. "An old fool" is made to be deceived!

During the day Savigny belonged to Claire, to the child who ran about
upon the gravel, laughing at the birds and the clouds, and who grew
apace. The mother and child had for their own the daylight, the paths
filled with sunbeams. But the blue nights were given over to sin, to
that sin firmly installed in the chateau, which spoke in undertones,
crept noiselessly behind the closed blinds, and in face of which the
sleeping house became dumb and blind, and resumed its stony
impassibility, as if it were ashamed to see and hear.




CHAPTER X

SIGISMOND PLANUS TREMBLES FOR HIS CASH-BOX

"Carriage, my dear Chorche?--I--have a carriage? What for?"

"I assure you, my dear Risler, that it is quite essential for you. Our
business, our relations, are extending every day; the coupe is no longer